Someone reported here recently that, when they asked about getting hold of books for the Reader outside the US, Sony Support pointed them at (IIRC) PG, ManyBooks, and Baen, so I think the word is getting through!

Someone reported here recently that, when they asked about getting hold of books for the Reader outside the US, Sony Support pointed them at (IIRC) PG, ManyBooks, and Baen, so I think the word is getting through!

Has anyone yet asked Sony if they plan to sell the Reader outside the US?

I have read that phillips hold the licence as it is their technology thus Sony are not allowed to sell in Europe but are trying to resolve this. I read this from a PDF file when I googled PRS-500. I have a new Sony reader but am just finding out how limited I appear to be downloading books from other sites

I have read that phillips hold the licence as it is their technology thus Sony are not allowed to sell in Europe but are trying to resolve this. I read this from a PDF file when I googled PRS-500. I have a new Sony reader but am just finding out how limited I appear to be downloading books from other sites

If you have a Windows Box or access to one, you can download LIT format files and use CLIT to stirp the DRM and either load the LIT file sans DRM into Book Designer or convert the LIT file to HTML and deal with it using html2lrf. Not hard really. I've done it a number of times already.

I have read that phillips hold the licence as it is their technology thus Sony are not allowed to sell in Europe but are trying to resolve this.

Well, that's close, raf1987: the e-ink technology belongs to a company called e-ink (unsurprisingly) and Phillips/iRex do have an "exclusive" license of some sort from them for the tech, but I'm not sure if that's manufacturing, sales or what.

And while that license might very well be complicating things for Sony in Europe (good point, that, I hadn't considered the ramifications of it), it certainly shouldn't have any effect in Canada, for instance.

We do know that there are definitely some legal-type obstacles in the area of book distribution rights. Specifically, we don't believe that Sony has global distribution rights, which limits where they can and can't sell books from the Connect Store. And since they've tied the Reader pretty closely to the ConnStore in their marketing strategy ....

If you have a Windows Box or access to one, you can download LIT format files and use CLIT to stirp the DRM and either load the LIT file sans DRM into Book Designer or convert the LIT file to HTML and deal with it using html2lrf. Not hard really. I've done it a number of times already.

Thanks for that. I will look into this. It is a good learning curve for me

Well, that's close, raf1987: the e-ink technology belongs to a company called e-ink (unsurprisingly) and Phillips/iRex do have an "exclusive" license of some sort from them for the tech, but I'm not sure if that's manufacturing, sales or what.

And while that license might very well be complicating things for Sony in Europe (good point, that, I hadn't considered the ramifications of it), it certainly shouldn't have any effect in Canada, for instance.

We do know that there are definitely some legal-type obstacles in the area of book distribution rights. Specifically, we don't believe that Sony has global distribution rights, which limits where they can and can't sell books from the Connect Store. And since they've tied the Reader pretty closely to the ConnStore in their marketing strategy ....

In Canada what might slow them down is French content. Canada is an officially bilingual country. A milk carton has English as well as French description even though the French speaking population is mainly concentrated in one area.

Also, Sony entities in every country are separate from one another, taking their own decisions relatively to the mother house.

Looks like the ABC Amber Sony Converter is available at http://www.processtext.com/abcsonylrf.html
It looks like it only converts from LRF. Now that they have this though wouldn't they update their other converters to convert to LRF?

In testing up to version 1.04, it has worked successfully with files created by BookDesigner, html2lrf (part of libprs500), LRF Creator, Falstaff's XML LRF creator, whatever Sony used for the non-DRM books that came with the Reader, and whatever BlackMask/Munsey's uses.

Some ManyBooks Sony files work fine while others seem to have a "slight" problem. Those files that have a problem with ABC Amber also cannot be opened in the PC version of CONNECT and display an error. I feel this is due to an error on the part of ManyBooks rather than a problem with ABC Amber Sony Converter.

Since this is a text converter, books like DropD.lrf (in the MobileRead Sony Download section) that are all graphics (guitar chords) will understandably not translate at all.

I don't know what Yernar will be up to next. He has already released freeware converters for LIT, PDB (Palm), and now LRF (Sony) files to other formats. He has commercial products for converting PDF and RB (RocketBook) to other formats. All of them have provisions for both single file conversions and batch file conversion.

If history is a guide (and I don't have any advance information here) then the LRF format might in the future appear in other conversion tools as a target format to convert to.

He gave us this tool for free and I, for one, am very grateful for it. I have already converted a badly formatted LRF from Munsey's, edited it to correct bad line endings and tripple spaces between paragraphs, and through BookDesigner recreated a now very readable LRF. Without Yernar's tool this would be impossible. It is to my knowledge the first tool to reverse LRFs. Remember that until today LRF and IMP were dead end formats that things went into but never came out again. I am quite happy about this.